


Reflections

by serenbach



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Established Relationship, F/M, Lifespan Difference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 15:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12728916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenbach/pseuds/serenbach
Summary: Logically Aloth had known that, unless battle or ill-fate hit them, he would likely outlive her.That knowledge had been less frightening one hundred and fifty years ago.





	Reflections

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since I read in the Pillars of Eternity lorebook that elves live for around 200-310 years, and godlike live for the lifespan of their parents (which for my moon godlike Nelda would be the dwarven one of 110-190 years) I’ve been hit with angsty thoughts. 
> 
> So here is a ficlet of Aloth having a belated realisation of the Lifespan Issue. 
> 
> (Nelda is 178 here, Aloth is 215. I picture them living in small house by the sea somewhere sunny).

Aloth stepped outside, a blanket folded over one arm, a cup of herbal tea in the other hand, as he joined Nelda sitting outside on their terrace. She’d wanted to sit on the other side of their little house, but that overlooked the sea and was open to the breeze. Aloth had hoped she would stay in bed for a little longer.

The terrace was a compromise. He put the tea down in front of her, ignoring the scrunched-up face of disgust she made as the smell reached her, and shook out the blanket insistently until she took it from him and draped it around herself.

“I’m really alright,” she assured him, wrapping her hands around the warm cup, though it didn’t escape his notice that she was not drinking it. She had been quite expressive about her reluctance to drink it, no matter what the healer had recommended.  

The pneumonia had been a thoroughly unpleasant experience for her, and a frightening one for him. There had been nothing he could do for her, no enemy to fight, no bargain to be made, nothing to prevent it.

She had recovered, though she still coughed from time to time, but for the first time since he’d met her, Nelda looked  _fragile,_ and the realisation had been a shock to him.

It was easy to forget just how long they had been together in this peaceful life they had struggled to create and protect, as the years and decades and then a century and more rolled past in happiness (if not always without trouble). Nelda, due to her godlike nature and her inherited dwarven sturdiness, in fact showed the years less easily than he did himself, what with the web of fine lines around his eyes and the fact that his hair was now as much silver as it was black.

But now Aloth was painfully aware of things that he had not consciously allowed himself to notice before.

How easily she got cold, and how the shivers would overwhelm her whole body.

How the joints in her hands and knees were stiff and painful when she first awoke, and how that stiffness was taking longer and longer to ease throughout the day, until it wasn’t really easing at all.  

How the light she emitted from her eyes, the markings on her skin and her horns was getting brighter and brighter, until he no longer needed a candle to see in their room at night.

It had been all too easy, as he had sat next to her while she was racked with fever and body-shaking coughs, to picture her soul burning out of her mortal body and re-joining the wheel.

Leaving him behind.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Nelda chided gently. “Like I’m about to melt in the sunlight.”

He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead, unable to answer, and she tucked a lock of hair behind his ear in an old, familiar gesture that only slightly lessened the grip of fear in his chest that had been there ever since she first got sick.

Logically he had known that, unless battle or ill-fate hit them, he would likely outlive her.

That knowledge had been less frightening one hundred and fifty years ago.

“I love you,” he murmured instead of replying. It was all that he could think of to say, and it was truer now than it had been the first time he said it. “Now drink your tea.”

She huffed out a little laugh and sipped at it, letting him fuss over her, doing all that he could to ease the ice in his heart.

But he’d had a glimpse of his empty future, and the fear of it would be slow to leave him.    


End file.
